Creation Moment 5/23/2013 - Ball State

The University where I went to college is making some news in the evolution-Creation debate.

"There is a very disturbing affair going on at Ball State University that everyone needs to know 

Ball State

about. The public university in Muncie, Indiana, has been under pressure from a rabid national atheist group and from atheist activist Jerry Coyne to discipline a young untenured assistant physics professor for teaching about intelligent design. Coyne and the Freedom from Religion Foundation (FFRF) claim it's a legal, constitutional matter, no less: teaching about ID violates the First Amendment! "It’s religion taught as science in a public university, and it’s not only wrong but illegal," writes Coyne. "This will now go to the lawyers."
Ball State has announced it will indeed scrutinize the situation. FFRF staff attorney Andrew L. Seidel complained in a legally vacuous letter to Ball State president Jo Ann Gora. Amazingly, the university responded with this ominous public statement:

The university received a complaint from a third party late yesterday afternoon about content in a specific course offered at Ball State. We take academic rigor and academic integrity very seriously. Having just received these concerns, it is impossible to comment on them at this point. We will explore in depth the issues and concerns raised and take the appropriate actions through our established processes and procedures.

Being the subject of such controversy, with your employer issuing public statements about how higher ups will be "explor[ing] concerns" about your "academic rigor" and "integrity," is obviously the last thing an academic in Eric Hedin's shoes wants. It's enough to make the blood drain from your face.
The only good news at this point is that Dr. Hedin's immediate supervisor, the chairman of the Department of Physics and Astronomy, seems to be backing him up. Quoted in a news article about the push to silence Hedin, reported by Inside Higher Ed, Thomas Robertson politely dismissed Coyne's complaint:

The information provided to me by Jerry Coyne contains nothing in addition to information that has been in my possession for some time. The syllabus published was approved by our department Curriculum and Assessment Committee. We review faculty performance regularly through student and peer/chair evaluations. I receive complaints and concerns from students familiar with faculty performance in their classes and investigate when appropriate. Given the totality of information available to me at this time, I do not share the opinions expressed on the web sites cited below. We will continue to monitor our faculty and their course materials and practices and take appropriate action when deemed necessary.

Coyne makes much of the fact that since 2005, exactly three students reviewing Eric Hedin's classes at Rate My Professors have complained about his favorable comments on religion. Otherwise, Hedin is evidently a very well liked and respected instructor, including by the three who didn't care for his remarks on religious topics -- whatever, in fact, those amounted to. It would be interesting to know what Coyne's students at the University of Chicago think of him. To date nobody has even bothered to rate him on the website." ENV

For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes,
His eternal power and divine nature,
have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made,
so that they are without excuse.
Romans 1:20 NASB